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Tuning down half a step - what's the point?

#83
I'm with others in that I don't see what the big deal is. I play a 5 now so I feel that I don't need to have alternate tunings for what I play but, even if I did, what's the big deal? I was listening to a live Marcus Miller performance of So What and he plays it in Eb. It would be very difficult to play it like him in the same key without detuning, even on a 5, because of the use of open strings and hammers. As someone else mentioned, things become a lot more difficult with standard tuning when hammer ons/offs are taken into account.

Bottom line - just use the tuning you're comfortable with.
 
#84
Ric5 said:
Actually DGCF is a great tuning for bass and DGCFAD is a great tuning for guitar ... that is a whole step down also called D standard.
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Oh, baby do I agree. The hard part is convincing the guitar player in the band to follow suit. Bastards.

For my solo guitar/vocal thing I tune down a half step. I had already arranged all the songs to be the proper key for my voice, but apparently just barely since that extra half step makes it so much easier for me to sing for three hours.
 
#86
Tbh I've no beef with dropping the tuning a semitone as long as the gauge will take it, but I've only been asked to do that once in 25+ years by a vocalists request. At the time I was using a heavier set, .50 on the G so not much bother, if it was a lighter .40 on the G set, that would be problematic tension/feel wise.
 
#87
Massimo636 said:
It's not that simple at all. I don't see how so many people think you can just transpose a song that's played in a different tuning with a 5 string. For example how would you play a riff like the bass line in Schism where you have to hammer on open D to 10th to 12th fret super fast if your guitarist was tuned a half step down. How would you hammer on from the 4th fret of the A string to the 14th fret and 16th fret? It's impossible. Many songs are impossible to just transpose. You have to play in the correct tuning for your band unless you are playing all easy material.
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+1 there are times when you must have that open string over a fretted one. there are many times i prefer and open e string dropped to a d over playing it fretted on a fiver. depends on the tune, pedalling etc.
 
#88
Sleeping Giant said:
The guitarist in my band wants us to tune down a semi tone. This seems to me to be completely pointless.

Does anybody know a real valid reason for it? Is it just so the guitarist can have slightly looser strings to make it easier for his solos?

I have been playing bass for 30 years and whenever I have heard of someone doing this I've thought it's just a waste of time.
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I heard that blues players starting doing it to make it easier to play in Eb (with horns), but that it also coincidentally does make bending easier.

I would be sympathetic to the guitarist if he's trying to do something involving a lot of bending. It won't make very much difference from the bass point of view but I also play guitar and I can you if you have heavy strings it makes soloing a LOT easier. It's worthwhile. Also it will make you sound a little different to most other bands as your tuning will be slightly different, which I think is a good thing.

The last band I was in the guitarist tuned down a major third, so I had to tune down a major second on each string so we could even play together. He had a really interesting sound!
 
#90
Very very common in my circles. Rock and blues bands often tune down for the above stated reasons. (There are many recordings recently in Eb tuning.) It doesn't really affect me in any way.

When we do tunes with drop D, I find it's often easier to just play it in standard. Can't do that with Slither, by Velvet Revolver, but...
 
#91
Want to really mess your head up? Play in an original band, and then after a year or so , listen to the guitar player who insists you have to tune down a half step.

You will be looking at your hand all set with an uneasy feeling wondering why it doesn't sound right.
 
#92
Sleeping Giant said:
The guitarist in my band wants us to tune down a semi tone. This seems to me to be completely pointless.

Does anybody know a real valid reason for it? Is it just so the guitarist can have slightly looser strings to make it easier for his solos?

I have been playing bass for 30 years and whenever I have heard of someone doing this I've thought it's just a waste of time.
Click to expand...

Some people find it pointless to put sugar in coffee but people still do it. It's just one of the great mysteries of this world!
 
#93
Another aspect of drop tuning is note memory. I learned all the notes in standard tuning on the fretboard as relative to the standard dot markers, and that makes it very difficult to find named notes when the bass is drop tuned. It's bad enough when one string is affected via a Hipshot D-tuner or a detuning bridge, but when the notes on all four strings are affected, then it takes a lot of practice and thinking to find them on the fretboard in their new location. It's not as simple as just thinking, "everything's to the left one fret." Even worse is changing back and forth between drop and standard tunings. Guaranteed frustration. I guess people who do this a lot get more at ease with it, but I never was able to do it. My answer was to go through the additional learning of the notes on a five-string in standard tuning, and I've done much better with that than I ever did with drop tunings.

IMO, the people who have the easier time with drop tunings are the ones who play more by ear and feel, vs. the ones who went through a music program or learned from method books and drilled the note locations into their heads. To be able to sight-read, you have to know exactly where the notes are on the fretboard.
 

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